Anonymous Strikes US Gov, FBI and Record Industry Websites over Megaupload Closure

Anonymous, the hackivist group, has claimed the responsibility for a series of attacks on various websites operated by the U.S. Department of Justice, Universal Music and also the Recording Industry Association of America.

Right after the US Department of Justice declared that they had forced the closure of Megaupload, the hackers initiated extensive retaliatory Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against government as well as entertainment industry sites, including the FBI, with some still remaining offline hours later.

Megaupload was shut down by federal prosecutors on January 19th over various charges of infringing piracy laws and distributing copyrighted contents illegally. In fact, this is one of the biggest online piracy crackdowns in the history of internet, which also saw the arrest of five people.

Soon after this, different online forums and Twitter received various comments promising retaliation and revenge, eWeek reports.

On their apparent Twitter feed, Anonymous, commented: "The government takes down Megaupload? 15 minutes later Anonymous takes down government and record label sites"

AnonOps, an account purportedly linked to Anonymous, took the credit for attacking the US Department of Justice website, with a post soon after stating "justice.gov & universalmusic.com TANGO DOWN! You should have EXPECT US!"

Anonymous, also claims that they attacked the sites of Universal Music, the Motion Picture Association of America, RIAA, DOJ, Broadcast Music Inc. and also the U.S. Copyright Office, PC World reports.